For those with older R7000 devices and have experinced intermittent and frequent wireless drops, especially in the 5GHz band, I think I may have a solution. After many, many, many times of trying to get support from Netgear on the R7000 over the past several years, I finally gave up and just accepted that the very old 1.0.9.42 firmware (and all of its security risk) was the only option. I also then replaced all of my R7000 routers with newer AX (Wi-Fi 6) routers, not from Netgear!!!
After all this time, however, I was finally able to speak with someone at Netgear support to actually help troubleshoot this issue with me. After updating my 3 older R7000 routers (circa 2015, 2017, and 2018) with the newest firmware 1.0.11.123, we then changed the following in Advanced -> Advanced Setup -> Wireless Settings on both 2.4 and 5 GHz.
Fragmentation Length: 2346 (change to 2304) CTS/RTS Threshold: 2347 (change to 2304)
I am assuming this changes the Wi-Fi ethernet frame size from the maximum allowable size of 2346 bytes, to the maximum 802.11 MTU size of 2304 bytes. So far, this change seems to have resolved the intermittent wireless drops on both 2.4 and 5GHz bands. I will keep testing. Hope this helps others.
Thank you for sharing. There was a CLOSED thread with many users experiencing issues with older R7000 firmware. I wish there is a way for the users to be aware of the fix you found!
Yes. I saw several related and closed threads that I was unable to reply to. Hopefully this fix works for people that actually still rely on the R7000….. fascinating to me that Netgear support can’t take 5 minutes to post this stuff to the user forum; after YEARS!!!! of people having this problem. This is why my AX routers are not from Netgear.
As a long time R7000 user who has suffered disconnects from the firmware past .42, I am interested in your results. I currently use .123 and although the disconnects aren't as bad as some previous firmwares, I still get a disconnect every couple days, that results in me doing a soft reboot. I do think that it has something to do with the number of devices overwhelming the device.
I am going to test your suggestion as well.
Please let us know what you discover over a few weeks.
Another thing that I forgot to add that seems to help a little as well is setting the NTP to the proper time zone..for some reason, every firmware update resets to the wrong time zone.... I have a lot less disconnects once I figured that out and changed to my proper time zone setting....may be only a coincidence, but that seems to help as well.
I'd be interested in your experiences with the Asus AX, thinking about the XT8 pair to replace the r7000 as the beyond 42 flakey firmware and now hitting the device limit on 2.4g devices is causing me headaches. even though my r7000 is very old now, it's range and speed it still pretty amazing. shame it doesn't push more devices to 5g to free up 2.4g space.
Just to update my testing of your setting..it did not work for me.. I still have the same issue with near daily once a day disconnect and the need to soft reboot....so no luck with setting to those parameters on my end.
@JWS9518… bummer. None of my R7000 devices are being use as primary WiFi anymore, was hoping to just get them working in case I needed them as back… at this point, they are headed for the trash can.
@Gupster… given the support received by Netgear on the R7000 over the years, I wasn’t about to jump on the Orbi train. I did a lot of homework on the XT8 and XD4. I use the XT8 nodes in a 6,000 sq.ft. multi-story home with a wired backhaul. I get wireless everywhere, in garage, driveway, backyard… no drops… amazing speed at distance, these devices are great. For another large house (in-laws), I went with the XD4 and wireless backhaul. Even though the XD4 does not have a dedicated 5GHz backhaul, replacing the R7000 was an immediate success. Spreading out the 3 nodes to all corners of the house, increases range beyond anything the R7000 could ever do. Getting full bandwidth at most locations in the house. Great experience with both the XT8 and XD4. Dump your R7000 in trash; worth the upgrade.
I'm using V1.0.9.88 and was having problems with 5G dropping frequently. Per a suggestion in one of the other threads on this topic, I enabled Smart Connect yesterday and haven't had any drops since then. I'll update this if it starts dropping again.
